A biweekly round-up of recent articles, blog postings and tweets about livestock, aid and other topics that may be of interest to ILRI staff, compiled by David Aronson.

It’s not just the bees: Insect populations are plummeting worldwide. But no one knows exactly why, or by how much—or what it might portend. The New York Times reports on what some scientists have taken to calling the ‘insect Armageddon.’

Professors at Michigan State University say they’re seeing a sustained growth in mid-size, African-owned farms in Africa—excellent news because these farmers bring new sources of capital and know-how, increasing agricultural productivity.

Icelandic dairy cows are setting their own schedule, including when they want to be milked, eat, drink, or simply wander around—and they’re producing more milk as a result. Turns out an autonomous cow is a happy cow—and a happy cow is a healthier and more productive one.

American dairy farmers, by contrast, are in dire shape. This personal account by a 40-year veteran farmer is sobering: ‘Dairy farming is little more than hard work and possible economic suicide.’

Armed men in central Mali killed 37 Fulani herders in mid-December. The killings are part of an increasing trend in violence taking place between Fulani herders and Bambara and Dogon farmers. Hundreds of killings have occurred in the last year alone.

And here is a long article in Reuters on the ongoing fights between nomads and farmers in northern Nigeria: ‘If the coming dry season follows the pattern of previous years, violence will soon erupt between herders in search of water for their cattle and farmers determined to protect their land.’

Turkey’s Janset Genel in full flight during the mounted archery event, which the 18-year-old would go on to win. (Photo credit: Amos Chapple RFE/RL)

Eat your heart out Wonder Woman: The third World Nomad Games in the Kyrchyn Gorge, Kyrgyzstan (previously covered here) feature some kick-ass female competitors. Splendid photos from Radio Free Europe here.

Farmers in Bangladesh are building on an ancient technique of creating floating farms that rise and fall with the swelling waters of the river delta. The BBC asks: Could this ancient technique help farmers cope with rising sea levels?

Much of Africa is already experiencing the 2-degree rise in temperature that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says will be catastrophic: They are living ‘the future that we are collectively still trying to avoid,’ says Gernot Laganda, chief of the Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction Programmes at the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP). ‘Each year,’ she says, ’28 million people fall back into poverty because of extreme weather events.’

The World Bank has developed an infographic on how climate change will affect sub-Saharan Africa. TL;DR: It’s not good.

Is it really milk if it comes from a plant? In the US, the fight between the dairy industry and the makers of new, plant-based ‘milk’ from almond, soy and oats is getting serious.

The World Bank is going to double its investments in climate change work to USD200 billion over the five years from 2021 to 2025, it announced at the COP24 conference in Katowice, Poland. This is little more than a down payment, however, as the Bank estimates an additional USD1 trillion will be needed in the poorest countries to meet climate commitments by 2030.

One way to help move towards a ‘net zero emissions’ planet is by looking at how indigenous communities contribute to ecosystem management through their traditional practices: ‘My community of pastoralists, for example, enhances soil carbon stocks through our seasonal migration, and has contributed to natural carbon sequestration for centuries,’ says a leader in the Global Forest Coalition.

Here’s a short e-book from the Mawazo Institute on some of the most compelling and surprising achievements in Kenya’s scientific history.

Some nice maps here on the major food crops. Perhaps we could convince them to do the same with livestock.

An interesting interview with Henning Steinfeld, chief of livestock information, Sector Analysis and Policy Branch, at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), on how livestock can go from being a part of the problem to being part of the solution.

The biggest problem with development initiatives is scalability, argues blogger Kevin Drum. That is not a counsel of despair: ‘Small pilot studies are the only means we have to provide direction for further research, and large programs that provide even a modest benefit should be considered worthwhile. In other words, we should probably be more demanding of small studies, but less demanding in our expectations for large programs.’

The agri-think tank FoodTank has a list of 119 organizations ‘shaking up the food system in 2019.’ Sadly, we didn’t make the list this year, but a number of ILRI’s sister organizations did.

South African farmers are selling more and more beef to China—and they’ve got Malaysia in their sights next.

A little off-topic, but this is a compelling explanation of why the world is the way it is.